


Methuselah

by MakeTheMoon



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Camping, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, OT4 kind of, friends to slightly more than friends, milestone birthday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 19:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12711219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeTheMoon/pseuds/MakeTheMoon
Summary: Link is having a hard time turning 40, so Rhett plans a birthday surprise."Two months before Link’s birthday, Rhett has a secret meeting with Stevie. They schedule a few extra episodes and move a couple meetings and in no time they’ve got the week opened up. Rhett and Link are free for seven whole days at the beginning of June.Rhett just hopes that Christy will be OK with Rhett taking every one of those days for himself."





	Methuselah

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually based on a true story about a guy whose wife saw his midlife crisis coming and took him to this exact tree. At the time it was the oldest known being on Earth, but it has since been surpassed by a currently nameless tree in the same area. Methuselah is nearly 5,000 years old. There are a couple lines in here taken directly from the article, which I'll link at the end.
> 
> Disclaimer: I've never been to California, let alone Inyo National Forest, so any of the info about the distance/climate is from Google. Some of it could be very wrong!

Rhett stretches up and grabs the door frame at the top and lets himself hang a bit - knees bent, toes still touching the floor, but most of his weight held by the frame. He groans and twists, pops his spine and shoulders, and sighs when he releases the wood.   
  
When he steps into the room Link is looking at him, somewhere around his stomach where his shirt had ridden up, mouth open like he’s about to say something. It takes him a few seconds but finally he blurts out, “have you been working out?”   
  
Rhett laughs, brushes off the question, “why, you like what you see?” and sits back at his desk to continue working.   
  
~~~   
  
A few weeks later, Rhett joins Jen in the mail room. She’s asked him to help - normally she’d get John or Chase or Stevie, but there was no one else around so she went to the boss. There were a few pallets delivered that she needed to unpack. They’re taking turns grabbing large boxes and bringing them into the storage room when Link walks past and stops in his tracks.   
  
“Oh, hey man, want to help? We still have a lot to unpack.”   
  
Link steps in, grabs a box of his own, and the three of them get the pallets unloaded in under an hour.   
  
Link pulls him aside when they’re done, hair matted to their foreheads with sweat, shirts sticking to their bodies, and says, “are you sure you should be doing that? You’re going to hurt your back.”   
  
“Pilates, man! I got it under control, don’t worry,” Rhett answers.   
  
Rhett  _ has _ been working out. He’s been doing pilates every morning, and getting to the gym before they head to work every second day. He’s 40 now, his back was acting up, and he was sick of feeling like an old man.   
  
Mostly, though, Link was in shape and Rhett wanted to keep up with him when they go on their hike for Link’s birthday.   
  
Link doesn’t know about this birthday hike yet, but Rhett is sure he’ll agree to go.   
  
~~~   
  
Two months before Link’s birthday, Rhett has a secret meeting with Stevie. They schedule a few extra episodes and move a couple meetings and in no time they’ve got the week opened up. Rhett and Link are free for seven whole days at the beginning of June.   
  
Rhett just hopes that Christy will be OK with Rhett taking every one of those days for himself.   
  
~~~   
  
Rhett and Christy are sitting on her couch, the kids at school, Link at work. Rhett had made up some excuse about having to drop back home for an hour and made his way to Link’s house.   
  
Now he’s having the conversation he had hoped he wouldn’t have to have.   
  
“Yeah, Rhett, I agree - he’s been a bit distant here, actually. You know, he was trying to carve something out of driftwood the other day,” Christy says. Her eyes are sad, but hopeful. Rhett knows he’s got her.   
  
“I think he just needs to take a moment for himself. See something cool. Something he’s never seen before. I think this will help.”   
  
“I knew this was coming, Rhett. But after your birthday he seemed fine, and I hoped that maybe he wouldn’t think about it too much.”   
  
“Sure, but it’s Link. If anyone were going to have a midlife crisis, it would be him.”   
  
~~~   
  
One month before Link’s birthday, Link finally notices the schedule change when he flips the calendar one too many pages.   
  
“Hey, what’s this about?” He strides into the room with the calendar in his hands, open on June and pointing at the empty week.   
  
“Oh shoot. Yeah, so. Huh,” Rhett stutters over his explanation. He knew Link would notice eventually, but he thought he had more time.   
  
Link laughs at him, rolls his chair over next to Rhett’s and says, grinning, “you planning a surprise party for me or something?”   
  
“Ha, you wish. No, actually… well, actually I planned a bit of a getaway?”   
  
“A getaway.”   
  
“Yes. A getaway. A hiking, camping getaway. We’d be gone for the whole seven days. And uh, just the two of us.”   
  
“Just the two of us.”   
  
“Yes, Link, just the two of us.”   
  
“Huh.”   
  
Rhett smiles and takes the calendar, flips it back to May and tells Link to forget about it for now, pretend to be surprised in a couple weeks when he was planning on telling him anyway.   
  
~~~   
  
Two weeks later Rhett’s knocking on the Neal’s front door, which in and of itself is weird. He would normally walk in like he owned the place, but today felt special.   
  
Lily answers and Rhett puts an arm around her shoulders in a side hug as he steps inside. She calls out to Link and then takes back off up the stairs with her phone in her hands. Rhett is suddenly caught off guard by how old she seems. She’s tall now, head coming up past Rhett’s elbows, almost to his shoulders. She’s smart and sweet and he’s just as proud of her as Link and Christy are. She’ll always be special - she was the first.   
  
“God, she’s talking to that boy again. I’m going to lose all my hair before I’m 40, Rhett,” Link is saying as he comes around the corner.   
  
Rhett laughs, a loud belly laugh, and holds out his present. “Speaking of 40. It’s early, I know, but here’s part of your gift.”   
  
“Oh no. You got me something? I didn’t get anything for you last year… now I’m scared,” Link is eyeing him and the present skeptically as they both sit on the couch. He can hear Lily sternly telling Lando to get out of her room and then her door slams. Link sighs.   
  
“Just open it, bo.”   
  
Link’s face softens at the nickname and he slowly tears the corners away from the gift.   
  
“You wrapped this yourself, didn’t you?” Link asks.   
  
Rhett chuckles, “is it really that bad?”   
  
Link is quiet for a moment before he says, “no, not at all. I like it.”   
  
The skeptical look crosses Link’s face again as he tears the rest of the wrapping off, and Rhett has to laugh.   
  
“I don’t get it,” Link says.   
  
“It’s a tent.”   
  
“It’s a tent. Why?”   
  
“Because we’re going camping.”   
  
“We’re going camping?”   
  
“Yep. In two weeks. For your birthday. For one full week, it’s just me and you and the wilderness. And this tent. Oh, and this.” Rhett gets up and heads to the foyer, comes back with another package. This one isn’t wrapped. It’s a sleeping bag.   
  
“I got one of those for both of us, they’re supposed to be pretty comfortable. They’re memory foam, because we’re old.”   
  
Link laughs at that, smile lighting up his eyes for the first time in weeks. Rhett feels pride spread throughout him that he was the one to do it.   
  
“Alright, I have a lot of questions-”   
  
“I figured.”   
  
“-question one: what about my dentist appointment?”   
  
“Who schedules a dentist appointment the week of their birthday? Number one. And number two, yeah I got that notification so I moved it.”   
  
“Alright, question two: where are we going?”   
  
“Ah, that I can’t answer. It’s a surprise. And, listen, I know you don’t love surprises like that, but trust me this time.”   
  
“When have I ever not trusted you?”   
  
Rhett feels his heart swell. It’s something they’ve talked about before, that they both trust each other fully, but to hear Link say it so casually was something else entirely.   
  
They spend the rest of the day in the backyard, forcing Lily out of her room to spend some time with them. She’s been trying to start a vegetable garden, wants to try to be a vegetarian much to Link’s disappointment. Rhett helps and encourages her while Link watches from the deck, and every time Rhett looks up he catches Link’s eye and they share a smile.   
  
  
~~~   
  
They leave later than they planned, changing their minds late at night. It was midnight when Rhett’s phone lit up, vibrating on his nightstand. He’d picked it up quickly and jumped out of bed carefully, trying not to wake Jessie. Link had been lying in bed for two hours trying to get to sleep, and he was self-aware enough to know he’d be cranky at 5:30am. So they changed their plans, set their alarms for 8:00am and Rhett picks him up an hour later. Link is in good spirits.   
  
They get to Big Pine just after lunch. They stop long enough for Rhett to fill up the car and get something to eat.   
  
It’s another forty-five minutes before they see the campers and tents, and Rhett pulls into a fairly empty corner of the campground.   
  
“I rented all of them,” Rhett says before they get out of the car.   
  
“Rented all of what?”   
  
“These camp sites. I wanted to make sure we were actually alone. So. We’ve got about eight camp sites all to ourselves, if we want. Which one do you like?”   
  
Link’s eyes drift around to the empty lots and one in the back catches his eye, so he points and nods towards it, and Rhett slowly rolls the car into the site.   
  
It’s quiet, the sun high in the sky, the distant sound of kids playing nearby and the wind rustling the trees around them. It’s peaceful. Rhett feels his heart rate settle, thinks he can even feel his blood pressure lower.   
  
They unpack the car and get to work on the tent. It’s two hours of yelling and grumbling and laughing, the stupid thing falling down three separate times. Finally they get it to stay and start rolling out their sleeping bags, putting a pile of extra blankets to the side just in case. Rhett grabs the barbeque from the trunk and sets it up just outside the zippered door.   
  
By the time they’re done, they’re exhausted and sweating and hungry. They spend the rest of the evening grilling and watching the stars, and when it gets too cold to stay outside they head in and get in their sleeping bags. They’re both trying to read, but they keep interrupting each other to laugh about something they remembered from two weeks ago.   
  
Link realises near midnight that they haven’t opened the top of the tent, and that was supposed to be the whole point. Rhett’s just about asleep when Link jumps up and runs outside. There’s a lot of shuffling, and Rhett braces for the tent to come crashing down around him, but then he hears the zipper and looks up, and he can see the sky. Link pulls back the fabric and secures it in the back and runs back inside, shivering.   
  
“You sure that plastic is waterproof?”   
  
“Yes,” Rhett answers sleepily. He doesn’t remember anything else until morning.   
  
~~~   
  
“Today is the day, buddy,” Rhett says quietly, right into Link’s ear.   
  
Link swats him away and grumbles, but he sits up and says “the day for  _ what _ ?”   
  
“Your surprise!” Rhett knows his smile is mischievous, but he can’t help it. Link still doesn’t know where they’re hiking to.   
  
“Right. Can we at least get breakfast first?”   
  
Within the hour they’re dressed, full of sausages, and ready to head out. The air is still chilly so they’re both covered in layers, ready to shed hoodies and shirts as they go. They each have a half-empty backpack, and Rhett catches Link eyeing them before they take off.   
  
“How heavy is that?”   
  
Rhett isn’t surprised at Link’s forwardness, but he feigns indignation anyway, hand over his heart and mouth wide.   
  
“Why, Link, do you think I can’t lift my own backpack?”   
  
“No, obviously not, I’m just. I’m worried about your back. This is all uphill, you know?”   
  
“When is the last time you heard me complain about my back? Really think about it.” Link goes silent, clearly searching his mind for the answer. “Exactly. I’ve been working on it, man, don’t worry about it.”   
  
“So you  _ have _ been working out!” Link snaps his fingers at him as he says it.   
  
“Yeah, you caught me. I’ve been taking care of my body. You should be, too! Now that you’re just as old as me.”   
  
“Psh, I’ll never be as old as you, that’s not how age works.”   
  
Rhett rolls his eyes, grabs their backpacks, and heads off away from the tent.   
  
They take it slow, stopping for pictures or water. Link is fascinated by the Bristlecone Pines and he often stops to touch them, feel their branches. Rhett lets him take his time, lets him take those moments for himself. Many of the trees are dead but still standing tall, their bodies twisted in elegant coils. Rhett eases Link’s mind with information, telling him that they’ll likely still be standing for years and years, that decomposition seems to be halted in the area for these trees. Even though they’re dead, that doesn’t mean they crumble. They stick around.   
  
The tree isn’t spectacular immediately. It looks just like the others, twisted and smooth, abnormal, almost alien. I looks like it belongs in a science fiction movie.   
  
_ Pinus longaeva _ _   
_ _ Methuselah _ _   
_ _   
_ They read the small sign nearby and Link’s brow furrows as he reads the history of the tree. Rhett gets a pamphlet out of his pocket and hands it to Link so that he has more information.   
  
They sit for a while, just off the trail and close to the tree. Link is reading through the pamphlet again when Rhett opens his backpack and takes out a wrapped box.   
  
“One more, buddy.”   
  
Link laughs softly and quickly opens the gift. As he opens it and turns the box over in his hands, smiling, Rhett pulls out two SD cards from his pocket and hands them over.   
  
“I know we aren’t working, and I don’t want these videos to go up anywhere. They’re just for you. I want you to remember this. This birthday, or this tree, or me and you here, whatever, all of it.”   
  
Link fiddles with the camera, figures out its settings, and starts filming right away. He films the sign with the tree in the background out of focus, and then close ups of the bark, and then the pamphlet. Then he gets Rhett to stand next to the tree for scale.   
  
Rhett’s looking up at it in awe, mouth wide and eyebrows up, but his exaggerated fake expression gives way to a real one. This tree is one of the oldest living beings on the planet. If Earth is the sole retainer of life in the universe, it’s the second oldest living being of all. He leans against it, drawing its strength, and this is why he brought Link here.   
  
He must have been obvious because Link is right there seconds later, hand outstretched and touching the bark, running his hand along its smooth twists and coils.   
  
They stick around for a while, and when they hear voices coming down the pathway they agree that they want to get a picture together. Their lives are on camera, public for the world to see, and they often embrace the moments that they aren’t staring down the barrel of a lens. But this is different, this is something they want to remember, to always know how tall this tree was at this moment in time, remember how blue the sky was, remember that there were still small piles of snow in the shadowed areas at the beginning of June. The other hikers take their picture, their arms around each other, and they’re still there sitting by the tree long after the other couple has moved on.   
  
Slowly they make their way back to their tent, letting the silence settle, letting their lungs work to keep the oxygen in their bodies rather than focus on speaking.   
  
They make it back to the campsite just before the sun sets, so they sit and watch, catch their breath, get hydrated. Link gets out the camera and films the sun and Rhett and their tent.   
  
Rhett turns the car on for a little while for some music. They listen to Merle and Brooks & Dunn and Shania Twain, then Kendrick and Kanye, then Rihanna. They use the songs as points of reference, flashbacks to their past, telling old stories that they each know by heart, stories that even their viewers know most of the details.   
  
Some of the stories have moments in them that they’ve never told other people. Like the time their friend caught Rhett’s I’m Dead move in their boxers late at night. They’ve told the story a dozen times but always conveniently left out the moment their friend stepped away and they fell onto the bed, twined together. They had slept like that that night, legs tangled and arms across each other’s torsos.   
  
Or two days after Link proposed with no ring, and he had seen Rhett for the first time since it happened. He had turned red and giggly, giddy with his love for his wife-to-be, but they’ve never told anyone that they had held hands, laying in Rhett’s bed at his parents house, listening to the rain as Link rambled about being scared for the future, Rhett squeezing his fingers each time his voice broke.   
  
Or Lily’s surgery. They had told the viewers about their nervous wait at the hospital for hours, had let them know that Rhett was there too, keeping them company. But they had never told the rest of the story, that later that night when visiting hours were over and they were forced to go home, that Christy had stayed with Lily and Rhett had stayed with Link at their house. They slept in Link and Christy’s bed, holding Link until they both fell asleep. They had woken up like that, too, and Rhett had wiped the hair from Link’s face and cuddled in tighter before they got up to face another day.   
  
Now, they’re sitting in the tent after turning the car off, letting the silence wash over them. They’re looking up through the window, talking about how they can see the Milky Way with the naked eye this far from the city. Link sets up the camera and films, crawling back inside and sitting on his sleeping bag.   
  
They point out a lot of shooting stars, coming up with more and more ridiculous wishes. When Link goes back outside to get the camera, the cold hits him and he hurries, puts it away and brings all of it back inside. Rhett’s shivering in his sleeping back at the draft coming in from the door, neither of them realising just how well insulated the tent was until the warmth was ripped away. When they see one more shooting star, Link wishes for a space heater and groans when one doesn’t magically appear.   
  
Rhett’s watching him when he looks up and they catch each other’s eye. Rhett tilts his head and Link doesn’t hesitate, he climbs over and crawls inside, curling up next to Rhett in their made up Baby Bear pose. He rests his head on Rhett’s shoulder and puts a knee over Rhett’s thigh and they shiver together for a few minutes until the warmth starts to set in.   
  
It only takes Link looking up at him once for Rhett to lean down and kiss him.   
  
They’ve never kissed before, as much as people think they have. Even their wives don’t believe them half the time, thinks they’re keeping one small part of their past a secret. They’ve kept the touches and tender moments to themselves, sure, but they’ve never kissed. Never had to lie about it because it was always true.   
  
So here they are, 40 years old, kissing for the first time. Link’s lips feel exactly as he expected - soft, smooth. He’s got two days worth of stubble on his cheeks and jaw, and that’s a whole new experience, the roughness under his hand as he cups the side of Link’s face.   
  
When they part, the look in Link’s eyes is new, too. Soft, maybe slightly nervous, mostly gentle and happy.   
  
“Happy birthday, Link.”   
  
Link snorts, “is that all? That’s what I get for my birthday? Man, I was hoping for something cool, not a stinkin’ kiss.”   
  
Rhett shoves his shoulder, “keep talking like that and I’ll kick you out.”   
  
Link smiles and jabs him in the ribs with a cold finger. “How did we make it to 40 without ever kissing each other?”   
  
“I don’t know, but now you’ve got something new to think about.”   
  
Rhett had been wanting to kiss him for years, had held back, not wanting to ruin what they already had. Their friendship was one of the most important relationships in his life, on par with his wife and children. Jessie had given him the okay years ago, told him that whenever he was ready, if he ever was, she’d be there to back him up, knew how much Link meant to him. Her easy acceptance had kept the feeling at bay for a long time, but when Link had started buying expensive things that he didn’t need, and making comments about oblivion, and coming to work tired and sad, the need for contact had grown - the need to make him feel better, to ground him, to take care of him, had taken over again.   
  
He had spoken to Christy - well, he had gotten Jessie to speak to Christy, like they were back in middle school - “do you think he likes me? Can you ask him if he wants to go to the dance with me?” - and Christy had taken slightly longer to come around, but they had gotten her there, together. Somehow Link hadn’t figured out any of it, hadn’t expected any conspiracy.   
  
Rhett knew Link needed something new, something to keep him thinking and reeling, and this was the best thing he could think of. If it all came crashing down because of a kiss, well. It wouldn’t, he knew. They had done everything together for so long that he knew that one kiss wouldn’t break anything. One kiss was just another experience they got to have together.   
  
Two kisses, though. Two kisses might be different, so he hesitated before rubbing his thumb along Link’s cheekbone, before leaning back in and pressing his lips against Link’s mouth, before swiping his tongue across the seam between both lips. Link hesitated, too, before he opened his mouth and let Rhett in, before letting their tongues circle each other and lick inside.   
  
He had him, then, knew that everything would work out. As it always did with the two of them. They were always on the same page, if not on exactly the same line.   
  
Rhett pulls back again and says, “want to go on an adventure?”   
  
That’s another story they had told their families, another story with an important detail kept to themselves. Before moving to California, Rhett had asked him the same question and waited too long for an answer, long enough that Rhett had gotten scared, heart beating fast and hard against his ribs. When Link had finally spoken, his eyelashes looked wet and his voice was just above a whisper when he said, “I’d go anywhere with you.”   
  
Rhett didn’t have to wait this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all once again for such wonderful feedback - I love this fandom so much.
> 
> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-november-12-2017-1.4396794/how-a-powerful-message-from-the-world-s-oldest-tree-saved-a-man-from-a-midlife-crisis-1.4396844


End file.
